My role at MIT is to try and make things easier for all Linux users
whatever their skill level and whatever their preferred distribution.
In the past MIT had Project Athena which acted as a focal point and
framework to get students involved in writing software and getting it
out into the world. It seems to me that MIT has, if you will, "gone
meta" on institutionally nurturing open source development. It's
kind of assumed that MIT students will write software if necessary as
part of some bigger world-changing activity.
Living in the trenches as I do, however, I am concerned that not
enough attention is going into identifying talented and interested
students, and giving them an entree into the process of getting their
ideas cooked up tested out and put into the world. Yes there are
exciting research projects where a community is formed and creative
stuff is done, but when the project is over, everybody goes home and
the lessons learned are published, not passed on.
Recognizing that I cannot get funding for a curriculum activity, and
I need to assure important bureaucrats that I am not endorsing a
product, or even putting MIT institutionally behind only one of many
possible worthy Linux endeavors, I think the Fedora Community is a
worthy framework.
What would I like to see from your program:
My goal is to help students interested in contributing to open source
to find out if Fedora is right for them, and if so to make it easy
for them to get involved, and to enlarge the MIT Linux talent pool.
Similarly to the position articulated by Jeff Spaleta, I need some
advice in doing the outreach. What kinds of outreach have been done
at other schools? What are the pieces to get this sort of thing
started? Most importantly, how can I show that it would be a
valuable thing to try with low risk to the bureaucrats?
Would I really get emails from students interested in participating
in Linux support and development if I did nothing more than poster
the campus?
-Bill
----
William Cattey
Linux Platform Coordinator
MIT Information Services & Technology
N42-040M, 617-253-0140, wdc@xxxxxxx
http://web.mit.edu/wdc/www/
On Jun 29, 2008, at 12:06 AM, Larry Cafiero wrote:
Hey All,
I appreciate all the enthusiasm, I know you guys are eager to
join, but I
was more curious in what you guys felt about the actual idea and
what you
would expect out of such a program? I want it to be different than
the
current ambassadors setup.
I know you guys have some bright ideas--let me hear them.
Thanks,
Jack
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